Hi guys. I've got a Windows 98SE and Red Hat linux 9.0 dual boot. My linux partition isn't particularly large enough for my tastes so I usually just mount the WIn98 partition and use that to store most everything. I just uninstalled alot of things I wasn't going to be needing anymore for windows (seeing as I'm just about through with using windows altogether now), so I was thinking a defrag is in order for the Win98 partition. Then I started wondering if it would be safe to do so with this relatively new setup . I know that linux is stored on a different partition than windows, but windows doesn't recognize it at all. So as windows is doing the defrag, I was thinking it might read this partition as a corrupt area of the HDD. My question is:
If I run defrag in windows, will it mess with the linux partition? and if so, would it cause any problems with linux?

Thanks.

Windows won't touch your Linux partitions. They are recognized as "unknown partitions" and Windows defrag will only mess with FAT12/16 and FAT32 partitions. In other words - it's safe.

Håkan

Thanks. I just wasn't too sure if windows was malicious enough to do something like that. I've never had a nonFAT32 fs before, so I wasn't sure what'd happen when defrag encountered one. Thanks again.

Probably a good question to ask; you never know what MS will do to non-native partitions....but hw-tph is right. You should be fine.

Also, I would install in Windows a more intelligent defragger like Diskeeper which does a much better and faster job. The canned defrag in Win98SE sucks

I agree with Bobmeister - the best way to defrag W98 is to boot into safe mode, make sure nothing is running or connected to your bos (printer, modem, etc) and then run it. Otherwise you may see it continually restarting.